The psychiatrist Lorna Wing, who has died aged 85, revolutionised the way autism was regarded and her influence was felt across the globe. She developed the concept of an autism spectrum and introduced Asperger's syndrome to the English-speaking world. As a mother of a daughter with autism, she championed the rights of families and proposed that every child should be treated as an individual and that parents and professionals should work closely together. In 1962, she joined a group of like-minded parents to found the National Autistic Society.

Lorna was ahead of her time in her thinking, always questioning orthodoxy, including the belief that Kanner's autism was a single and distinct condition. In 1943, the psychiatrist Leo Kanner, based at Johns Hopkins University hospital in the US, had been the first to identify a disorder he called "infantile autism". Failure to use language to communicate with others was one of the key features of Kanner's autism. Lorna was the first to challenge this narrow perspective.

From 1964 until 1990 she worked at the Medical Research Council social psychiatry unit, at the Institute of Psychiatry, in Denmark Hill, south-east London, and in the 1970s developed the concept of a broad autism "spectrum". She coined the term to express the idea that there is not one but a wide range of disorders that all share the essential features of autism. Her favourite phrase was: "Nature never draws a line without smudging it." It is very difficult to draw neat boundaries between those who have and who do not have an autism spectrum disorder. She believed, in fact, that having some autistic traits is necessary in order to be successful.

I joined her as a research assistant at the MRC in 1972. We worked together on data gathered from patients in Camberwell, south London, which led to the identification of the "triad" of impairments – social communication, social interaction and social imagination – which are associated with the repetitive patterns of behaviour commonly found in people with autism. In 1981 Lorna published a groundbreaking paper in the journal Psychological Medicine on the work of the then little-known Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger which introduced the term Asperger's syndrome to the English-speaking world for the first time.

In 1991, we founded the NAS's National Autistic Centre for Social and Communication Disorders, in Bromley, Kent, which in 2008 was renamed the Lorna Wing Centre for Autism. It was the first place in Britain to provide a complete assessment and advice service for children, adolescents and adults with social and communication disorders.

The Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders , which she and I developed in the70s, remains one of the most detailed forms of clinical assessment. DISCO was established in order to provide a method of collecting information through a semi-structured interview to assist diagnosis. The assessment has gained international recognition and courses have been held across Europe, Asia and Australia; DISCO has also been translated into Japanese, Swedish and Dutch; and our approach to diagnosis has now been recognised in the American international classification system. Lorna was appointed OBE in 1994.

She was born Lorna Tolchard in Gillingham, Kent. Her mother, Gladys, was a nurse and her father, Bernard, an engineer in the Royal Navy. Lorna attended Chatham grammar school for girls before going to University College hospital, London, in 1949 to undertake medical training. She met her future husband, John Wing, when they both shared the same cadaver in anatomy class. John and Lorna were married in 1951. They both qualified as psychiatrists and began work at the Maudsley hospital. It was John, who studied German, who was responsible for translating the original 1940s Asperger paper for Lorna.

The couple's only child, Susie, was born in 1956. At three years old she was diagnosed with autism and learning disabilities. Susie's diagnosis gave Lorna enormous insight and made her determined to change things for other children.

Lorna was an exceptionally generous person. She gave freely of her ideas and expected nothing in return. Someone once described her to me as having "non-competitive excellence". Professionals' arrogance was anathema to her. She disliked jargon, fuzzy ideas and unproven treatments and interventions, and was not afraid to say so. She was, however, always incredibly sensitive to the needs of people with autism and their families.

In her later years, she found time for her special interests, which were gardening, detective stories (a passion she and I shared, because we were both intrigued by the complex ways in which people behave) and her love for animals.

Susie died in 2005 and John in 2010.

• Lorna Gladys Wing, psychiatrist, born 7 October 1928; died 6 June 2014